The Travis County Commissioners' Court meets at the Stokes Building on the NE corner of 11th and Guadalupe, starting at 9 AM tomorrow, Tuesday, June 24. The Lowe's item, sponsored by Gerald Daugherty, is #18 on the agenda and our best estimate is that it will be heard early, around 9:30 or 10 AM.


If you have never seen the county in action, here is a great opportunity to witness your property taxes at work.


The Lowe's issue is paralell to our concerns about the Wal-Mart Supercenter project.

Remember, we have a Circle C HOA Town Hall meeting on Wed at 6:30 to plan for action to deal with the new Wal-Mart and similar Wholesale or Discount warehouse scale commerical properties around us.

CCHOA has an architectural standard by virtue of their settlement with Stratus Properties. Those guidelines, and more, have been offered to Endeavor, in the form of constructive dialog - to encourage them to bulid appropriate stores, suitable to our local community.

Lowes

Russ,

Where do they plan on building Lowes?

Where

On Brodie , north of HEB

What I know about the Lowe store

I don't think anyone objects to Lowes (or Home Depot) building in areas designated for big, high volume traffic, regonal scaled businesses build in Austin's prefered growth corridors, but building on the Edwards Aquifer is another story.

Sunset Valley has done it's best to discourage Lowe's from building in their area, to the point that they de-annexed the property, hoping that the City of Austin would prevail.

Instead, our Texas Legislature passed a very specific bill in the previous session, which makes contested zoning cases where the original city backs out, default to the County level.

While this sounds convienient, it's a law that was so narrowly defined, that it may be overturned in the courts (years from now). It's part of a class of bills often nicknamed ''Austin Bashing Bills''.

In this case, the city of Sunset Valley put principle over profit, even called mortorium on building projects.

The issue is primarily one of inappropriate zoning (not required to meet SOS specs, but it really should). Sound familiar ? It is exactly the issues we have with Endeavor's Wal-Mart Supercenter project.


So, that's why we need to support the city of Sunset valley and others in the commissioner's court. The Travis County Commissioner's court generally operates indempently and they are not particularly environmentaly friendly in past rulings.

Nobody attendes their meetings and their actions are subtle, remote, and never seem close to home. This one is and our commissioner for our precint isn't particlarly good a communicating with us.

Let's change that.